


Cause You Feel Like Home

by FelicityGS



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Amused Natasha, F/M, Finding home, Grumpy Loki, brief mentions of Thor, quiet and soft and gentle, senior year of undergrad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-13
Updated: 2018-03-13
Packaged: 2019-03-27 17:21:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13885533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FelicityGS/pseuds/FelicityGS
Summary: Loki's in his last year of university--he doesn't know what to do with his future, except to keep staving it off for someone else to deal with. Not like his brother, like Sif, like everyone else he knows, with their precise roadmaps of their futures.But then, there's Natasha--who doesn't have it all perfectly laid out, content with the uncertainty.





	Cause You Feel Like Home

**Author's Note:**

> I started this a very, very long time ago. I thought it'd be nice to have a uni AU that wasn't all unrealistic dramatics--or realistic, in the case of some freshman year AUs. Have one set in that weird period where the future is uncertain, and the people have mellowed out.
> 
> I hope you like it--comments appreciated.

**_First Friday of the school year, 10pm_ **

She’s late. He’s not surprised, no one wants to work the the ten to two at the library on a Friday night—he half wonders why she bothered signing up for it.

 _Natasha Romanova_ the schedule says; it rings some bells but not enough, at least not until she walks in, up the stairs to the desk, red hair bright and vibrant—like fire, like blood—and says, “Sorry I’m late.”

She’s got a bag, like she’s going to study. Like what he’s planning. Maybe she will show up more than once.

“You can shelve,” Loki tells her, dismissive, because _he’s_ certainly not giving up the front desk. She was late.

She smiles.

 

**_Second Friday, 11:45pm_ **

“What was that about?” Natasha asks as he comes down the steps and stops next to her at the front desk.

“Freshmen,” he says, spits the word out like rotten fruit. “I hate freshmen.” He grabs the returns from the cart behind her.

She doesn’t say _you were a freshman once_ , the way that Thor would, or Steve, or any _number_ of people who think to call themselves friends and he’s finding more and more are strangers, put together and ready for whatever happens when they graduate in spring.

“They looked drunk,” is what she says and he pauses instead of sulks his way back to the other desk.

“They were,” he tells her, precise. “Apparently the college experience is making out in the shelving.”

Natasha eyes the entryway, the door the two idiots no doubt bolted through after he chased them out with threats of expulsion and calling security he wouldn’t quite be able to back up—not like they knew.

“Didn’t you do that as a freshman?” she asks, honest and curious.

“I wasn’t drunk. I had _class_ ,” Loki sniffs, but his lips are trying to smile, and when she rolls her eyes and grins, he does, too.

 

**_Third Saturday, 2:15am_ **

“Go home,” he tells her, annoyed, shifting his bag on his shoulder and checking his phone for the time again.

“I’m good,” Natasha tells him. Her bag is next to her on the counter—smart. He should probably do the same, but experience has taught him as soon as he does security will arrive and it’ll be a moot point. “You said he’s on the way anyway.”

“Yeah.” He leans to look over the railing again, but the sidewalk just outside the front glass doors are still decidedly empty. It takes security ten minutes to walk through the building and lock all the doors—the library is certainly not small—and while _technically_ they’re supposed to wait until he’s done, Loki is entirely planning on skipping out as soon as he arrives. “Doesn’t mean you have to wait for him.”

Belatedly, it occurs to him that he always sees Natasha walking the same direction as the security guard. Stupid—there might be all _kinds_ of rumours about Romanova on campus, particularly in regards to her ability to kill people with her bare hands, but that doesn’t mean he should _assume_ they’re true or that she feels comfortable walking home by herself.

The security guard arrives.

“You two can leave,” the guard says before Loki can tell him they are leaving, whether he likes it or not, which solves at least one quandary he had—he’s gotten into arguments with security about their being late and being able to leave before they finish their walkthrough before, after all.

Which leaves Natasha.

Natasha is an adult and can walk herself home. Natasha absolutely doesn’t need someone to do so, and seeing as she is at _least_ a third degree black belt in some martial art he's never bothered to learn the name of she's far more likely to be able to defend herself than _he_ can.

He waits until they've walked out the door before deciding he may as well _offer_. She does always leave with the security guard, and she's paused outside too.

"Do you need someone to walk you home?" he asks, stiff, at least enough self-preservation to stand out of arm's reach--rumours can be true, too.

Natasha glances up at him from her phone, blinking, then she smiles like she knows exactly why he asked, like she knows exactly why he's staying out of arm's reach, like she knows _everything_ and she's amused by it all.

"I'm good," she says. Then, "Do you?"

He's caught off-guard, but not in a bad way--turnabout is fair play.

"No. Have a good night, Natasha." He's smiling--again--and her name feels full on his tongue. He can't remember the last time someone made him smile because he was amused like this.

"You too, Loki," she says.

 

**_Fourth Saturday, 1:02am_ **

"What are you studying, anyway?" Nat asks.

"Linguistics," he says, distracted, frowning over a question in his practice test book.

"You study _linguistics_?"

 _That_ catches his attention, hackles thoroughly raised.

"Yes, I do. And what do you study? Home decorating?”

“Architecture, actually,” Natasha says, smiling despite his caustic tone; it only makes his lips draw tighter. He shouldn’t let this bother him, he’s had three years of people saying _linguistics_. “What do you do with a linguistics degree?”

“I speak and read fluently in four languages,” he snaps, like it’s obvious. Like clearly that says _exactly_ what a person does with a linguistics degree, though he’s spent more than one night lately tossing and unsure, staring at the ceiling and mind twisting on itself.

“I can’t imagine you as a teacher,” she says.

“Are you suggesting I can’t?”

“No. I just mean I can’t imagine you as a teacher. Or a diplomat. Maybe a translator?”

“Are you suggesting I cannot be diplomatic? Why are you here, you’re meant to be shelving.”

“All done,” Natasha says, leaning back from the cart with a smile. He sniffs, annoyed, and looks away towards the other desk, trying to think of something else for her to do—but it’s Friday night-Saturday morning, and the library is silent except for them and fluorescent hum of lights.

He should say something cruel then, to drive her off.

“Let me make it up to you.”

He blinks at her, snaps his mouth shut once more.

“Pardon?”

“I obviously touched a nerve,” she says, practical and smiling, just slightly, like she knows something he doesn’t. “Why don’t I buy you lunch one day, to make it up to you? You can tell me about all the languages you know.”

He can’t shake the feeling she’s mocking him, still, but he is also loath to turn down free food.

“There’s a really great café at the corner of campus.”

“I know there is,” he snaps. “I have gone to school here for three years.”

“Then you know it’s great.”

He hedges another moment, but her smile is infuriating and he isn’t entirely sure she _is_ mocking him—and even if she is, then at least he’ll at least take the free lunch out of spite.

“Tuesday,” he says. “I am free Tuesdays from one until three.” Technically noon to three, but he despises lunch crowds at noon.

“Tuesday works. One thirty. Here.” She reaches, grabs a slip of paper meant for call numbers and not the phone number she scrawls across it. “Call me or text, if something changes.”

 

**_Fifth Tuesday, 1:35pm_ **

“I was beginning to think you had ditched,” she says.

“I thought to,” he says, honest and only a little cruel.

She laughs.

 

**_Sixth Friday, 10:20pm_ **

“You’re late,” he says, clipped. He looks up. Pauses. “You’re hurt.”

“Is that concern I hear?” she asks. It’d be more flippant if her nose weren't broken, the skin around one eye dark as a bruised peach.

“Did one of your models fall on you?”

“No,” she says, smiling. “Practice went poorly.”

He eyes her another moment.

“I’m not frail like you, Loki.”

“I’m not _frail_.”

“No,” she agrees, setting her bag down on the table. “Why don’t you shelve tonight?”

“I was here first. You were late.”

“I’m injured.” She gives him perhaps the most pathetic puppy eyes—eye—that he has ever seen. Worse than Thor even. It is absolutely not effective in the slightest.

“You’re buying me lunch,” he mutters, closing his book and throwing it back in his bag.

“Tuesday?” she asks sweetly.

 

**_A Wednesday, mid-October, 3:03pm_ **

“What _are_ you doing when you graduate?”

“I don’t know,” he admits, staring up at the clear blue sky instead of at her. It’s the first time he’s said it aloud, and it feels like a weight pressing down his throat at the same time tension melts out of his shoulders. “Graduate school, I suppose. I’ve sent a few applications. What are you doing?”

“Probably working.” He hears her take a bite of apple, thinks how she didn’t list it all out, how not everything is perfectly put together—not like Thor or Steve or, heaven help him, Sif.

It’s… nice.

 

**_Fall Break, late October_ **

He doesn’t go home for fall break; he usually doesn’t. He doesn’t see a point in it, when college is all about spreading his wings and _home_ is some nebulous word that means _listen to them heap praises on Thor_. Thor knows exactly what he’s doing--Loki hopes he chokes on it.

Natasha doesn’t go home either.

Seeing as everyone else has, they end up working together more often than not. She has a single project; he has several papers.

Loki pulls seniority so he can spend his days working on the papers and not dealing with shelving. Natasha puts up a token enough fight that they can both pretend she isn’t taking pity on him. They get lunch together, and sometimes--most times--she doesn’t even feel a need to chatter and he can simply _be_.

It’s… nice. _Pleasant_ even.

 

**_Fall Break, late October, Wednesday morning_ **

“There’s a sci-fi and horror movie triple bill at the varsity theater Wednesday,” he tells her, casually, leaning against the front desk and watching one of the poor groundskeepers shoveling snow off the front steps.

“Today’s Wednesday,” Natasha points out, unimpressed.

“So it is,” Loki says. “Would you like to go? It starts at seven.” He resolutely doesn’t add _my treat_ , though he would like to; he isn’t _desperate_ by any means.

She studies him another moment, then shakes her head, smiling.

“Sure, I’ll go.”

He smiles, small and pleased. It will be nice to have the company, that’s all.

“Excellent,” he says.

 

**_Fall Break, late October, Wednesday evening_ **

They walk back together, afterwards. She doesn’t live that far from him.

“That was a nice date,” Natasha says, smiling.

He snorts.

“Call it what you want,” he tells her.

“Okay,” she says, gloved hand sliding into his, stepping closer so they bump shoulders. He thinks about pretending to slip for an excuse, and decides against it; instead, testing, squeezes back.

He’s still smiling, a little, when he gets home.

 

**_mid-November_ **

Her lips are warm and a little chapped, and her smile is like coming home.

 

**_early December_ **

“Is this--what would you want to call this, between us?”

Natasha looks up at him where she lays against his chest. Her weight is familiar, and she’s gone back to using the strawberry-scented shampoo.

He received a letter, today. It sits in the kitchen, under the phone bill, and he has been trying to forget it’s there at all.

Natasha is still considering him, gaze hooded.

“What would you want to call us?” Natasha asks.

Loki looks away, back at the television.

“I don’t know,” he admits quietly.

“You do.” Natasha rests her head back on his collarbone, placing one hand on his chest. It’s warm, and he wonders if he can feel his heartbeat. If she caught it, and that’s why a decision to stave off the future has suddenly become so difficult.

It’s only been a few months.

It’s already been a few months.

Where did the time go?

“Stop thinking,” Natasha says. “You’re killing the dialogue.”

He tries.

 

**_That night_ ** **  
**

"So what do you really like in bed?"

"Oh, being choked, leather, collars, you know, the usual." He blinks, closing his mouth with a click, and smiles charmingly. He's much more drunk than he thought.

"Oh?" Natasha asks, eyebrow a perfect arch and lip curling up. She runs her tongue over her teeth, leaning closer, eyes bright, and Loki doesn't try to lean farther back where he's sprawled over the couch, watching curiously to see how close she will press. Pity he's so drunk--he's sure any other time his body would be aroused as the rest of him.

“You didn’t say,” she purrs.

“But you knew.” He is sure of this.

“Yes.” She tosses her hair over a shoulder, taps his nose with one finger. “Well, I had a good hunch.”

“How?”

“Your skin turns a fantastic shade of pink when I tell you want to do.”

Loki considers this, running his tongue over his molars. He supposes he must, if she says he does. There’s no point in disagreeing, not for now.

“Now what?” he asks instead.

“We sleep.” Natasha presses a kiss to the corner of his mouth. “We’re both too drunk to do anything with this now.”

“So practical.” He can’t help the sarcasm.

Her laugh says she knows.

“Then take it as an order,” she says, eyes sparkling.

 

 

**December 14th, sunrise**

His head aches; his eyes feel too heavy. He doesn’t remember the last time he got so drunk, or woke so hungover. There is hair tickling his nose, a back pressed against his chest, and everything smells of strawberries.

Natasha’s.

He needs to leave-- _now_ , not in six months, when he finishes and moves across the country to grad school. _Now_ , before she takes anymore of him.

He cracks his eyes open, fighting against how it makes his head pound. He is on the side by the wall--of course he is--which leaves only the window to escape through without waking Natasha.

At least she is on the first floor--the drop will be easy.

“Where are you going?”

He pauses where he is trying to figure out the lock on the window. He glances at her; she is awake, one arm behind her head, other resting on her stomach. She looks… amused, and concerned.

“It’s awfully hot in here, don’t you think?” he says lamely, and knows she does not believe him.

She does not have the courtesy to pretend she does, as she usually does.

“What’s changed?” she asks.

“Nothing.”

“Then you’ve been moody for no reason?”

“No.”

“What are we?”

“I don’t know.”

“Liar.” Her gaze is steady; he has to look away. “What are we, Loki?”

“I got accepted to Indiana University’s linguistics program,” he says in a rush; he doesn’t look at her. He does not want to see whatever emotions might flash across her face.

Does not want to see what emotions won’t.

“And?”

“I will need to move.”

“And?” she repeats; he finally looks at her.

She is… steady. Certain.

“What does it matter what we are, then?” and he can't keep the frustration from his voice.

“You are ridiculous.” She smiles, but it doesn’t quite take the sting off the words. “There are apprenticeships in Indiana too.”

“What?”

“I mean, I guess it depends on what we are, doesn’t it? Because if we are a _thing_ , then why wouldn’t I move with you? You’re the one tied to your program.”

“Oh.” He blinks at her and her easy smile.

“Idiot,” she says, and pats the spot next to her on the bed.

He lays down; after a moment, he wraps an arm around her waist, buries his nose in her hair, and breathes.

 

**_mid-January_ **

“You’re back,” Natasha says as Loki arrives at the library.

“Somehow,” Loki says. “How many delinquents did you catch over the break?”

“Zero. I think they come to torment you.”

“Of course you blame me.” He sets his bag down in the back storage area and clocks in--a few minutes late, but not enough to affect his paycheck.

“I wouldn’t say _blame_ ,” Natasha begins, then stops to laugh.

Loki checks they’re alone, then kisses her cheek.

“It is nice to be back,” he murmurs.

She slips a hand in his, squeezing gently; she does not check before kisses him, lips warm and a little chapped.

“It’s good to have you back,” she says, her smile is everything he remembered and then some. “So I heard back from a few of the firms I contacted. How do you feel about road trips?”

“Awful,” Loki says, grabbing the cart of books--he was late, after all.

“Then you won’t mind one for spring break,” she says cheerfully, and sticks one more book on the cart.

“I’ll complain the whole time.”

“I wouldn’t expect anything less,” she says with a wink.

He pulls the cart with him, backing out of the staff area, and starts off for the 100s in the back corner. As he scans for where the book goes, he allows himself to think of the future.

He smiles.


End file.
